Moriori

Europeans first encountered Moriori in 1791 when a British expedition led by George Vancouver discovered the Chatham Islands. According to the first descriptions, Moriori had a much more primitive culture than the Maori and other peoples of Polynesia, and also had dark skin, but spoke the language of the Polynesian family .

For a long time there were two main versions of the origin of the Moriori people. The first European researchers assumed that Moriori are representatives of the Melanesian group of peoples . Another part of the researchers believed, based on national legends, that Moriori are representatives of the Polynesian group of peoples who independently migrated from the Pacific islands to the islands of the Chatham archipelago around the 5th century. Moriori themselves told that descend from the legendary leader Rongamaifenua, who sailed to Chatham from Eastern Polynesia, and his brother Rongamaitere went to the land of Aotea (they believe that this word means New Zealand, which the Maori aborigines called Aotearoa). In another version of the myth, the Maori themselves sailed from Aotea.

However, studies of recent decades refute this point of view and recognize the ancestors of the Moriori as the descendants of one of the Maori tribes who migrated from the South Island of New Zealand to the Chatham Islands and developed in isolation for several centuries. Proof of this is the proximity of the dialect Moriori to the dialect of the Maori language of the Ngāi Tahu tribe of the New Zealand South Island , as well as a comparison of the pedigrees of Morori ("hokopapa") and Maori ("fakapapa"). Modern studies show that the ancestors of Moriori migrated from New Zealand to the Chatham Islands at the end of the 14th century ^{[3] [4] [5] [6]} .

The word "moriori" comes from the pre-Polynesian * ma (a) qoli , which by reconstruction has the meaning of "true, real, genuine" ^[7] . This is akin to the word "Maori" and probably also meant "ordinary people."

The first immigrants fell into conditions that differed sharply from their usual living conditions on the New Zealand islands of North and South , since it was impossible to grow most of the crops known to the Polynesians on the damp and cool Chatham archipelago. Therefore, the main and almost the only source of food for the first settlers in Chatham and Pitte was seafood - fish, meat and fat of sea animals and birds.

Since there was not enough wood on the Chatham archipelago , Moriori created four types of wakas that differed from New Zealand prototypes and were more like rafts than canoes:

• Waka-puhara ( Maori waka pūhara ), or kori ( Maori kōrari ): had two keels and a flat bottom. His stern stem was decorated with carvings.
• Waka-rimu ( Maori waka rimu ): was similar to waka-puhara, however, the sides and bottom of the boat were covered with fiber of dried seaweed .
• Waka Pahi ( Maori waka pahī ): A waka used to sail to distant islands.
• Waka-ra ( Maori waka rā ). ^[eight]

The difficulties of preserving the people and the problems of the survival of their representatives in small territories and the limited natural resources became the basis for the creation of a moriori hunting and gathering society as an organizational principle of self-organization.

The limited population was caused by the Morori introduction of cultural prohibitions on cannibalism , which was part of the traditions of their ancestors, the Maori. An attempt to save their people caused the introduction of cultural and religious prohibitions on waging wars. Pacifism as an ideology was formulated by the legendary leader Morori Nunuku-whenua . His ban on violence and cannibalism read:

... when people get angry and feel that they can strike another person in anger, they can do it, but only with a stick no more than a thumb thick and no more than a hand long. The battle ends at the first damage to the skin or the appearance of a drop of blood and then everyone should consider that their honor is satisfied.

- Oral tradition

The ban on war was accompanied by a terrible curse:

“From now on and forever, from this day, let there never be wars! May your womb rot away on that day when you dare to disobey!”

- Oral tradition

^[9]

The pacifist ideology of non-violence prevented disastrous internecine wars and ensured the peaceful development of nine Morori tribes (Hamata, Wheteina, Eitara, Etiao, Harua, Makao, Matanga, Poutama and Rauru) for 24 generations. However, the Nunuku covenants, interpreted as divine law, morally disarmed the Moriori in the face of the Maori invasion at the beginning of the 19th century and led to the almost complete disappearance of this people, exterminated by the invaders.

In order to limit the population in conditions of an extremely limited food base, Moriori resorted to castration of some of the boys in infancy. ^[ten]

The first Europeans landed on the shores of Chatham Island on November 29, 1791, and the archipelago was proclaimed British territory. Soon, European whalers and hunters of sea animals appeared on the islands and began to conduct active work. According to various estimates, from 10% to 20% of moriori died as a result of the emergence of new infectious diseases. After the 1810s, the first Maori settlers arrived on the islands, creating their own settlement Wharekauri, whose name became the Maori name of the Chatham archipelago.

The most tragic page in the history of the Moriori people was the invasion of the islands of the Maori tribes by the and . They came from the Taranaki region of the New Zealand North Island, but arrived from the Wellington area, where they were driven out during the musket wars . Having lost their ancestral lands under the pressure of more powerful tribes, they decided to seize the Chatham Islands and make them their property.

On November 19, 1835, the first detachment of 500 Maori warriors arrived on Chatham Island on the captured ^[11] British brig Lord Lord Rodney. In anticipation of a second batch of warriors, a Maori from Lord Rodney killed a 12-year-old girl and hung her body on a mast to intimidate Moriori. On December 5, 1835, a second ship arrived with 400 soldiers on board. After that, the Maori warriors, armed with rifles, battle clubs and tomahawks, began to bypass the territories of the islands and seize the land of Moriori without demand, invitation or permission from local residents. Arriving invaders declared themselves masters of all lands, and indigenous islanders their subjects.

To discuss this difficult situation, the Moriori gathered a council of all the tribes in the settlement of Te-Apavatiki. Knowing the Maori’s penchant for killing and cannibalism, the young Moriori and some elders insisted on resisting the invaders, saying that the pacifist principles of Nunuku no longer fit the demands of the day. However, the supreme leaders of Tapat and Torea categorically rejected their demands, saying that the Nunuku covenants are not a law that can be canceled depending on a particular situation, but are an immutable moral imperative.

When Moriori refused to submit to the invaders, without resorting to violence, the Maori massacred the indigenous people. They killed most of Moriori and seized all their property and lands. Moriori, who had been banned for many centuries by wars of war and had no military traditions and organizations, became easy prey for the attackers, especially since the arrivals had a numerical superiority and firearms. The invaders subjected the Moriori people to real genocide , which the surviving Moriori recalled: “The Maori began to kill us like sheep ... We were terrified and fled to the bushes, hiding in crevices, who was where to hide from the killers. There was no salvation anywhere, we were found and killed all in a row - men, women and children indiscriminately. ” About 300 Moriori were ritually slaughtered and eaten by Maori warriors. The Maori conqueror later recounted: “We took possession in accordance with our customs and caught everyone. Not a single one escaped. We killed the runaways, some others too, but what of that? It was in accordance with our custom! ”All of the surviving Moriori were enslaved and became the property of the Ngati-Mutunga and Ngati-Tama tribes.

To inspire the islanders with horror, Maori enslavers executed the ritual execution of every tenth morori, leaving them bound to die a painful death from the heat on the beach for several days. The invaders also banned Moriori from speaking their own language. In order to humiliate Moriori and break them morally, the invaders forced them to desecrate their own sacred places, causing them to urinate and defecate there. Because of this, many Moriori died of “kongenga” (despair), while others committed suicide.

Researcher , who visited the Chatham Islands in the 1840s on a New Zealand company ship, reported that the Moriori were in severe slavery by the Maori and were so cruelly oppressed that death was a blessing in comparison.

The Maori conquerors forbade their Morio slaves to marry among themselves, and Moriore women to have children from Mori men. The Maori invaders raped Moriori women and many of them were forced to give birth to children from their Maori masters. Only a small number of Moriori women were able to create families with husbands from Moriori or Europeans. Some Moriori women were taken out by the conquerors and never returned to their homeland. It is believed that by 1862, out of the total known maximum number of 2,000 people, only 101 representatives of the Moriori people remained alive, which makes up only 5% of their original number.

Only in 1863, Moriori officially freed from slavery and became full citizens of their country. In 1870, despite the fact that the bulk of the Maori invaders had already left the islands of the archipelago, the recognized the Ngati-Mutunga and Ngati-Tanga tributes for the main parts of the lands of Chatham Island. This was another reason, this time economic, reflected in the very possibility of the Moriori people.

In 1843, a group of German missionaries from the Moravian church arrived at Chatham, mingling with the remnants of Moriori ^[12] .

According to the 2013 census, there are 36 Moriori on the Chatham Islands, and the vast majority live in New Zealand - 354 on the North Island and 348 on the South ^[1] .

The Moriori community is organized as the Hokotehi Moriori Trust ^[13] . The Moriori community has been recognized by the British Crown and the Government of New Zealand for their claims against these institutions for a period of lawlessness and oppression. The authorities of New Zealand took a number of measures to compensate for past injustices committed in the relations of Moriori. In particular, moriori are recognized as the original population of the Chatham Islands (Rekohu, translated from Morori language - the Blurred Sun). At the same time, the government also recognized the Maori tribe Ngāti Mutunga as the indigenous population of the Chatham archipelago by right of more than 160 years of residence in this territory.

According to the 2013 census, the population of the Chatham Islands is 600 people ^[14] , including 264 people of European descent and 336 descendants of the indigenous population, including members of both ethnic groups - Maori and Moriori. In January 2005, the Moriori community celebrated the opening of the new Marae Coping (Prayer House).

The modern descendants of the Maori, the conquerors of 1835, at their request, received their share in the tribal quotas for fishing rights in the waters of the Chatham archipelago. Now, after being recognized as the original population, Moriori, being recognized as an ethnic group earlier than the Māori, despite the objections of some Ngati Mutunga, also received their quota for fishing rights.

One of the storylines of David Mitchell’s novel Cloud Atlas contains a detailed account of the history of the Moriori people. One of the characters in this novel, Atua, is Moriori.